Rewilding advocate, financier and host of the popular podcast Rewilding the World, Ben Goldsmith, joins Mongabay’s podcast to discuss nature restoration in his home country of England, where a significant cultural change is taking hold toward reviving biodiversity, such as beavers. Once seen as a nuisance there, many farmers and planners now embrace the rebound of the huge rodent, thanks to its impressive ability to mitigate flooding events that the island nation now experiences with regularity, due to climate change.

“If you stop a random person on the street now, in the city or in the countryside, they know that beavers are back, that [they] are native species, that they play a vital role in managing our rivers,” he says.

However, he argues that while there has been some rewilding momentum in England, it’s not happening fast enough, particularly for larger carnivores like wolves.

“The idea of reintroducing them is considered madness. Even though there are news reports of swelling populations of deer and growing incidents of Lyme disease and road traffic collisions and a disequilibrium in our forests,” Goldsmith says.

Subscribe to or follow the Mongabay Newscast wherever you listen to podcasts, from Apple to Spotify, and you can also listen to all episodes here on the Mongabay website.

Please send questions, feedback or comments to podcast[at]mongabay[dot]com.

Image Credit: Chrome Hill in Yorkshire, England. Image by Tim Hill via Pixabay (Pixabay free content license).

Timecodes

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(00:00) “We don’t have wildlife here”

(11:46) England’s rewilding comeback

(15:05) Cultural and economic shifts

(25:24) Changing environment policy

(30:52) Nitrogen and pollinators

(37:43) Getting along with ‘difficult’ wildlife

(47:51) Rewilding the World

On this week’s episode of Mongabay’s podcast, best-selling author Alan Weisman details the people and places he visited in reporting his new book, Hope Dies Last, a chronicle of miraculous accomplishments and resilience of the book’s protagonists, many of whom are working to solve humanity’s most intractable ecological problems.

The book’s impetus was an accumulation of despair at the state of the world and how humanity treats it. “I started this book because I was really, really, really depressed about how I saw systems breaking down,” Weisman says.

But as he uncovered each story, Weisman’s tune changed. He explains the ingenuity and bravery of the people and projects he visited that altered his perspective on what is possible.

“By the end of this book, I was so uplifted by all these people — and by the variety of people — that I found, in the most extraordinarily different circumstances, each of them daring to hope and oftentimes succeeding, that I'm there with them. This ain't over.”

Subscribe to or follow the Mongabay Newscast wherever you listen to podcasts, from Apple to Spotify, and you can also listen to all episodes here on the Mongabay website.

Please send questions, feedback or comments to podcast[at]mongabay[dot]com.

Image Credit: Kicker Rock in the Galápagos, Ecuador. Image by Rhett A. Butler/Mongabay.

Timecodes

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(00:00) The Mesopotamian Revitalization Project

(07:56) Why does Hope struggle against itself?

(13:27) Creating food from thin air

(24:06) Suing the government to protect species

(31:03) The most dangerous country Alan visited, the U.S.

(35:54) New forms of energy

(45:39) Power is the most addictive drug

(51:53) This ain’t over

The Nature Of is a new podcast series from the nonprofit nature and culture magazine Atmos that speaks with prominent figures in conservation and culture about how humans relate to the natural world, and how they might heal and strengthen that relationship.

On this episode of Mongabay’s podcast, its host and Atmos editor-in-chief Willow Defebaugh details the series’ resulting revelations and why her publication covers the environment through the lens of community, identity, arts and culture.

“From the beginning, we knew that we wanted to invite creative storytellers and artists into this conversation alongside scientists and journalists,” she explains.

Storytelling and the arts, she says, house rarely tapped potential for helping people place themselves in the context of nature: “I think that what we need is to be changing people's hearts, not just minds.”

Defebaugh also highlights how little individual action is actually needed to inspire greater collective action among the public, a fact that Harvard researchers revealed: only 3.5% of the public needs to be engaged in non-violent resistance for a movement to succeed.

Subscribe to or follow the Mongabay Newscast wherever you listen to podcasts, from Apple to Spotify, and you can also listen to all episodes here on the Mongabay website.

Please send questions, feedback or comments to podcast[at]mongabay[dot]com.

Image Credit: Willow Defebaugh, co-founder and editor-in-chief of Atmos. Image courtesy of Camila Falquez/Atmos.

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Timecodes

(00:00) The nature of relationships

(11:24) Why science and empathy go together

(16:23) On ‘spiritual ecology’

(20:43) Meditations on how humans see nature

(23:41) Willow’s inspiration

(26:10) Identity, community & nature

(28:43) Art & culture

(31:10) Biomimicry

(36:38) Collective vs individual action

(43:14) Speaking of solutions

Singapore has come a long way since the 1880s, when only roughly 7% of its native forests remained. Since the 1960s, when the city-state gained independence, it has implemented a number of urban regreening initiatives, and today, nearly 47% of the city is considered green space, providing numerous benefits to human residents and wildlife, like heat mitigation, freshwater conservation and cleanliness, carbon sequestration, coastal climate adaptation, biodiversity protection, and public enjoyment.

To discuss his city’s regreening efforts — from the philosophical to the practical applications of methods and mindset shifts that have allowed the city to revitalize its urban wildlife interface — Anuj Jain, director and principal ecologist at the biomimicry consultancy bioSEA and an adviser to BirdLife International, joins Mongabay’s latest podcast.

“ Through the greening initiatives in Singapore, it's attracted a lot of species, many of which actually had declined before, some even had gone extinct, or locally extinct,” Jain says.

Subscribe to or follow the Mongabay Newscast wherever you listen to podcasts, from Apple to Spotify, and you can also listen to all episodes here on the Mongabay website.

Please send questions, feedback or comments to podcast[at]mongabay[dot]com.

Image Credit: Supertree grove is part of the Gardens by the Bay (GBTB) urban park in Singapore, covering 105 hectares (260 acres). Image by Tien Tran (tientran0019) via Pixabay (Pixabay Content License).

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Timecodes

(00:00) Making the ‘city in a garden’

(10:01) What Singapore looks like today

(13:51) The many benefits of urban greenery

(20:53) Ecology and biomimicry design

(24:30) Cleaner, more plentiful water

(25:55) Urban regreening in the Middle East

(29:16) To densify, or not to densify?

(33:04) Where Singapore still struggles

(36:33) Living more harmoniously with wildlife

Narratives help shape our society, culture and environment, entrenching beliefs that can help — or harm — our planet and human rights. Tsering Yangzom Lama, story manager at Greenpeace International, joins Mongabay's podcast to explain how dominant narratives — stories shaped by existing power structures and institutions — often undergird destructive industries and favor the powerful and the wealthy, and to discuss what people can do to counter such narratives.

In this interview, she expands upon thoughts shared in the essay “How to Reject Dominant Narratives,” from the new book Tools to Save Our Home Planet, published by Patagonia Books.

"A dominant narrative in reality would be anything that supports the status quo … what we have right now is a system in which we're trashing the world in which a small minority is profiting off of that destruction, and in which the vast majority of humanity does not have the basic necessities for a dignified human existence," she says.

Subscribe to or follow the Mongabay Newscast wherever you listen to podcasts, from Apple to Spotify, and you can also listen to all episodes here on the Mongabay website.

Please send questions, feedback or comments to podcast[at]mongabay[dot]com.

Image Credit: Emergent tree in the Amazon Rainforest, Ecuador. Image by Rhett A. Butler/Mongabay.

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Timecodes

(00:00) What is a dominant narrative?

(08:04) Understand how they work

(12:56) Countering the narrative

(17:56) Making a more compelling appeal

(20:31) The real goal is to change our conditions

(23:32) When movements get co-opted

(26:20) Conversation is key

(28:49) Creating a narrative where none exists

Jean-Gaël "JG" Collomb says community-based conservation organizations know best how to tackle the complex conservation challenges unique to their ecosystems. However, they’re also among the most underserved in terms of funding of all stripes. On this week's episode of Mongabay's podcast, Collomb explains how his nonprofit, Wildlife Conservation Network (WCN), is working to change that.

When it comes to funding conservation," it's really difficult to know who to give your money to besides a handful of organizations that a lot of people are familiar with," Collomb says.

WCN facilitates partnerships between community-based conservation groups, primarily in Global South nations with funders, in what has previously been described as “‘venture capital for conservation,” or as Collomb says, “people invest in people.”

They are “the first actors,” he says. “We're huge fans of being able to encourage people to give unrestricted [funding] … those organizations who are based on the ground in the field know best how to use that money.”

Subscribe to or follow the Mongabay Newscast wherever you listen to podcasts, from Apple to Spotify, and you can also listen to all episodes here on the Mongabay website.

Please send questions, feedback or comments to podcast[at]mongabay[dot]com.

Banner image: Beach on Mioskon Island in Raja Ampat. Photo by Rhett Bulter/Mongabay.

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Timecodes

(00:00) Why community-based conservation?

(09:54) How WCN works

(14:10) The importance of unrestricted funding

(16:48) Transparency & ethics in philanthropy

(19:59) 30x30 and Indigenous sovereignty

(27:08) Scientific advancements

(31:16) Either/or

(35:33) USAID funding cuts

(40:29) Connecting with WCN

This week on Mongabay's podcast, celebrated author and repeat Nobel Prize in Literature candidate Robert Macfarlane discusses his fascinating new book, Is a River Alive?, which both asks and provides answers to this compelling question, in his signature flowing prose.

Its absorbing narrative takes the reader to the frontlines of some of Earth's most embattled waterways, from northern Ecuador to southern India and northeastern Quebec, where he explores what makes a river more than just a body of water, but rather a living organism upon which many humans and myriad species are irrevocably dependent — a fact that is often forgotten.

Regardless of whether humans see rivers as useful resources or living beings, Macfarlane says their great ability to rebound from degradation is demonstrable and is something to strive for.

" When I think of how we have to imagine rivers otherwise, away from the pure resource model, I recognize that we can reverse the direction of 'shifting baseline’ syndrome. We can make it ‘lifting baseline’ syndrome. We can make our rivers touchable, then swimmable, then drinkable again. Drinkable rivers. Imagine that!"

Subscribe to or follow the Mongabay Newscast wherever you listen to podcasts, from Apple to Spotify, and you can also listen to all episodes here on the Mongabay website.

Please send questions, feedback or comments to podcast[at]mongabay[dot]com.

Banner image: The author Robert Macfarlane. Photo by Bryan Appleyard. Courtesy of Robert Macfarlane.

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Timecodes

(00:00) The liquid asset story

(05:42) The beginning of the ‘hydrocene’

(12:49) Is a river alive?

(20:01) ‘Rights of nature’

(30:02) Landmarks of hope & looming threats

(35:41) ‘Slow violence’

(39:43) ‘A gathering that seeks the sea’

(45:13) Public waterways under private ownership

(48:59) How the Cuyahoga River caught fire

(53:58) Collective health over private wealth

Roughly a billion people enjoy coffee daily, and more than 100 million people rely on it for income. However, the coffee industry is the sixth-largest driver of deforestation and is also rife with human rights abuses, including the labor of enslaved persons and children. But it doesn't have to be this way, says this guest on the Mongabay Newscast.

Etelle Higonnet is the founder of the NGO Coffee Watch, having formerly served as a senior adviser at the U.S. National Wildlife Federation. The main commodity on her radar now is coffee. On this podcast episode, she explains how the industry can — and should — reform its practices.

"It's so simple … pay a living [a] living income wage," she says, " and a lot of human rights violations will just dry up."

To target deforestation, Higonnet says the European Union Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) is "a beautiful law" that "simply put, would bar imports of coffee into the European Union if that coffee is tainted by deforestation or illegality. So, two things that are illegal off the top of my head are slavery and child labor."

Subscribe to or follow the Mongabay Newscast wherever you listen to podcasts, from Apple to Spotify, and you can also listen to all episodes here on the Mongabay website.

Please send questions, feedback or comments to podcast[at]mongabay[dot]com.

Image Credit: A cup of coffee with beans and a teaspoon on a stump tabletop. Image by Anja (cocoparisiene) from Pixabay (Pixabay Content License).

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Timecodes

(00:00) Coffee tied to slavery and deforestation

(07:03) How we can stop it

(12:36) Why are prices soaring?

(19:25) How the EUDR can help

(25:56) When will the EUDR come into effect?

(29:40) Why the coffee supply chain is simple

(33:54) What about certification schemes?

(37:46) What coffee drinkers can do to act